Block.one, publisher of the ground-breaking EOSIO blockchain software protocol, today announced that Mike Lempres, Chief Policy Officer at Coinbase, Galaxy Digital Founder and CEO Mike Novogratz, Edelman Public Relations Vice President Margot Edelman, and High Fidelity co-founder and CEO Philip Rosedale will participate as judges at its EOS Global Hackathon event in San Francisco on November 10-11.

The event, which will be opened by Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer, will also feature on its panei of judges Rob Jesudason, President of Block.one, and Dan Larimer, Block.one CTO and inventor of the revolutionary Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) blockchain consensus algorithm.

“EOSIO is a global project that is engaging the best developers from around the world, so we’re delighted to be bringing this series to the world’s most dynamic tech hub,” said Block.one President Rob Jesudason. “San Francisco lies at the heart of the tech universe and it’s clear to Block.one that the city’s best and brightest are seizing the power of EOSIO to propel blockchain toward mainstream adoption. We’re seeing a wave of innovation and creativity and it’ll be exciting to see that up Glose at this event.”

The hackathon will be attended by more than 400 programmers and developers, who will compete in a race against the clock to solve a specific challenge that will involve developing an application that uses the EOSIO codebase. A top prize of US$100,000 is on offer to the winning team.

“I am thrilled by the support US developers have shown for EOSIO,” said Dan Larimer. “This is an opportunity for us to show our appreciation by bringing this hackathon to one of the country’s most well-known tech hubs. We’re seeing the rapid growth of a diverse and dynamic blockchain ecosystem and events like these fuel that momentum.”

The top three prize winners, as well as the team selected for the Best Social Impact Award, will join the winning teams from three previous events and compete in a Grand Finale Pitch Competition in Cape Town, South Africa on December 7. The ultimate winner in South Africa will receive a Grand Prize of US$500,000, taking the total prize money awarded during the series by EOS VC, Block.one’s venture capital arm, to US$1.5 million.

Mike Lempres is Chief Policy Officer at Coinbase, the nation’s leading digital currency company. Coinbase provides exchange and wallet services to enable consumers and investors to access digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. Mike works to ensure that state, local, federal and international policy makers create a legal and regulatory ecosystem that enables digital currencies to grow and operate in a safe, trusted way. From 2017-2018, Mike served as Coinbase’s Chief Legal & Risk Officer when he led the legal, compliance, risk, corporate secretary and government affairs teams.

In addition, Mike serves on the Boards of ali Coinbase subsidiary companies. Mike has worked extensively in both the public and private sectors. He has been appointed by three Presidential administrations to senior government positions and has worked closely on a daily basis with two Attorneys General. He was selected as a White House Fellow, and has served as a Deputy Associate Attorney General and Executive Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Michael Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Prior to Fortress, Mr. Novogratz spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was elected Partner in 1998. Mr. Novogratz served on the New York Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets from 2012-2015.

“We’re in a period of rapid innovation in the blockchain industry. The ideas developed at these hackathons have the potential to shape the future of how blockchain technology is applied, impacting the lives of millions of people. I’m honored to take a front-row seat at these events from Block.one,” said Rosedale, co-founder and CEO of High Fidelity, an open-source distributed Virtual Reality platform. High Fidelity received funding from Block.one’s venture capital arm EOS VC, through a fund managed by Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital.

Prior to High Fidelity, Rosedale created the virtual civilization Second Life, populated by one million active users generating US$700m in annual transaction volumes. In addition to numerous technology inventions (including the video conferencing product FreeVue, which was acquired in 1996 by RealNetworks, where Rosedale later served as CTO), Rosedale has also worked on experiments in distributed work and computing.

Margot Edelman leads Edelman’s Emerging Technology offer in the US and is based in San Francisco; passionate about ali things tech, Margot advises executives and business leaders on communications and her clients range from tech companies to venture capital firms to well-known individuais.

Margot has worked for seven years on the press team at the World Economic Forum during its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where she led broadcast media from Reuters, Bloomberg, Associated Press and others around the Forum and arranged broadcast interviews with participants. Margot is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Harvard University, where she was a writer for The Harvard Crimson.

Confirmed judges are:

Dan Larimer, CTO, Block.one

Rob Jesudason, President, Block.one

Mike Lempres, Chief Policy Officer, Coinbase

Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO, Galaxy Digital

Margot Edelman, Vice President, Edelman

Philip Rosedale, Co-founder and CEO, High Fidelity

Bradford Stephens, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Blockchain Capital

The full panei of judges will be released closer to the hackathon date.

The San Francisco edition follows EOS Global Hackathon events in Hong Kong, Sydney and London. To date, over 1,000 participants have been involved in the series, which is aimed at growing the developer and enterprise ecosystem around EOSIO and helping the world to grasp the opportunities presented by blockchain technology.